We See the Stars

  Sarah’s face was pale and she kept looking between them and back to me. Nicole was holding her face and crying, and the other kids came running across the quadrangle to join in.

  ‘Everyone knows he was in love with her,’ Sarah said, dodging around Cassie to try and get to Nicole. ‘He probably knocked off the dog to get all her attention.’

  Cassie hit her then, real hard across the nose, and Sarah squealed and fell down so heavily that Cassie went with her, and the other kids formed a circle around them so that all you could see was arms and legs in the centre of it, but not which arms and legs belonged to who.

  ‘Take it back,’ Cassie yelled, with her teeth all clenched together and with Sarah’s hand pulling down on her hair. ‘Take it back!’ she said again.

  They rolled across the concrete, and when Mr Wade pushed through the circle to break up the fight, Cassie’s hands were covered in scratches, and Nicole was still crying about the slap, and Sarah had chunks of Cassie’s hair caught under her fingernails, and there was a big angry graze all down along Sarah’s face.

  ***

  Ms Hilcombe accidentally stepped on Tink, because she was so small and always jumping up and around you, and Ms Hilcombe was so upset that she’d killed Tink completely by accident that she wrapped her up in a towel and put her in the backyard. Then she was so sad about it that she didn’t think she could stay in the house anymore, and so she left straight away without saying goodbye, and now she has another dog in another house with another school, and even though she’s pretty happy, she’s still sad when she thinks how much she misses us.

  ***

  Only one other kid had ever got expelled, and it was ages ago so no-one really knew for sure what had happened, though there were all different stories. Some kids said their bigger cousins had been in class with him so they knew it was definitely true that he’d been caught kissing a teacher and that her husband had found out and nearly skinned him alive. Other kids said that their dads used to work with his dad and he’d been kicked out because he’d tried to set the school on fire to protest about going to the war. There were so many stories that there was never any way to know which was the right one, but everyone agreed Cassie was the first-ever girl to get expelled, and when Davey and me found her waiting for us in the lane after school, she said that was the bit she was most proud of.

  ‘I’m not even worried, Numpty,’ she said. ‘It was worth it to make those bitches squeal.’

  ‘But how are you going to get to high school?’ Davey asked.

  Cassie looked down at her feet. Her shoelaces were undone and she could have tripped on them.

  ‘Mum wants me to go live with Nan in the city,’ Cassie said. ‘She’s had it, she reckons.’

  The bees were so loud in my ears I almost couldn’t hear what she was saying, and the prickles went up from my arms and in behind my eyes, and if I pushed my tongue to the top of my mouth it got stuck there, and there would never be enough water in the tap to make it come back down. I sucked my breath in so hard that my skin caught up under my ribcage.

  ‘The city’s real far,’ Davey said. His bag was low on his shoulders, and half unzipped, and if you looked in you could see it was full of chocolate bar wrappers and an old banana peel that had gone brown right down the front.

  ‘Yeah, and she wants me to go soon as I can,’ Cassie said. ‘She’d already phoned Nan before she even picked me up.’

  ‘Was she mad?’ Davey asked, his eyes all bright.

  ‘Yeah, I’m grounded,’ Cassie said. ‘But then she had to go to work, so…’

  ‘We have to go to Ms Hilcombe’s,’ I said.

  Cassie looked at me like she was a little surprised I was still there. ‘Why?’ she asked.

  Superman leant his back against the fence and put a finger over his lips, and his cape was so red in the sun it nearly hurt just to look at.

  ‘They don’t know anything,’ I said.

  ‘Who don’t?’

  ‘The policemen.’

  ‘About Hilcombe?’ Cassie asked.

  ‘We have to go find her,’ I said.

  The apple on Ms Hilcombe’s desk turned brown and then fuzzy with white, and when it had melted down so only the seeds were left, they planted themselves into the wood. The tree grew big enough to spread all the way through the classroom, and the apples on the branches hung just low enough to reach, but if you pulled one down and took a bite it was rotten, and grainy, and much too sweet.

  ‘But, matey,’ Cassie said, and she put her hand on my shoulder and it burnt right through to the skin, ‘we don’t know where she is either.’

  ‘We have to look,’ I said, and I felt an angry coming up through the ground to wind itself over my shoelaces, so that I had to keep kicking my legs to get them free, and my jaw was aching from the squeeze in it, and Cassie was moving to the city to go to a different school.

  ‘Okay,’ Cassie said, and she looked over at Davey, who was watching me with his mouth pulled into a frown. ‘Okay, we’ll go look.’

  Twenty-one

  We waited until it was dark enough, and until there weren’t any cars out on the street, and then Cassie and I met up at the roundabout and walked together to Ms Hilcombe’s. We were careful to stay tight up against the fences and away from the streetlights, and when we thought we heard a car coming we’d duck down and wait and we wouldn’t move a muscle until we were sure that it was gone.

  The thing about Ms Hilcombe’s house was that it was quiet, but there was too much dark and it was too still. There weren’t even any police cars out the front anymore, but there were witches hats all along the driveway going right up to the back gate. Cassie and I walked around them, and we were real careful not to walk too close in case we knocked one over and someone would find out we were there. When we got to the gate I put my ear to it to see if I could hear anyone, but it was quiet enough that all you could hear was your own breathing, coming back up at you all warm from the wood.

  ‘Here, give me a boost,’ Cassie said, and she reached up to grab the top of the gate.

  I felt the prickles all up and down my arms, and for a second I just looked at her, and when she turned to me her eyes were wide and shiny in the darkness.

  ‘C’mon, Numpty,’ she said.

  I got down on one knee and she stood on my leg, with her boot right down in the middle of my thigh, and when she jumped up I nearly fell into the garden, and the burn went all down my leg and into my shoe. Cassie swung herself up over the top of the gate, but it was wood and she was real loud, and a dog started barking in the house next door. She froze, with one leg halfway up and the other dangling down beside my face.

  ‘Shit, shit,’ she said. She tried to kick her leg over but she missed. I heard her take a big breath before she swung her leg all the way over.

  ‘Shit,’ she said from up the top of the gate, with one leg on my side and one on the other. Her pants had got caught on the wood and she’d split them from the knee down to the ankle.

  She jumped and I heard her hit the concrete on the other side.

  ‘Bugger shit,’ she said, and the dog kept barking in the house next door, and Tink had been buried in the dirt at the bottom of the garden, with her blood all spreading out inside the towel.

  ‘Can you open it?’ I asked, with my ear pressed right up to the wood.

  ‘These were Mum’s bloody pants,’ Cassie said, and her words came out all in a hiss. I put my eye right up to the crack in the gate and I could see her doubled over in the dark on the ground. ‘Oh, she’s going to fucking murder me.’ ‘Cassie?’ I called. It came out in a hiss more than a whisper.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, and I heard the latch snap back.

  The police had worked really hard on the backyard, because if you didn’t watch where you stepped you could easily fall into a hole. Cassie and me walked along the back wall, so close that I nearly fell over the tap, and the whole time we watched the yard to make sure there wasn’t anyone hiding, or that we wouldn’
t trip and wind up in the dirt.

  ‘Man,’ Cassie said, but real quiet under her breath. ‘They really did a number on the joint, that’s for sure.’

  Tink’s hole was right in the middle, and if you leant over you couldn’t really see how deep it was, but it was enough that there wasn’t anything in there but black.

  ‘This is creepy, Numpty,’ Cassie said, and she held out her arms so I could see all the goosebumps. ‘Even for me, I mean.’

  ‘We just need to get in so I can search in the bedroom,’ I said. I turned around to face the house, and the back porch was dark.

  ‘Not any less creepy,’ Cassie said, but she followed me up the steps just the same. She cupped her hands up against the window and put her face between them, and then she yanked on the door real hard.

  ‘It’s locked,’ she said. ‘There’s definitely no-one in there, but.’ She put her hands back up to the window. ‘Geez, it’s a bit of a mess.’

  I looked over my shoulder and saw Superman holding a rock in his hands. He waved for me to stand aside, and then he pulled it back level with his shoulder, and when it went through it made a crash that echoed up and around the yard.

  ‘Holy crap,’ Cassie said, and she stepped back off the porch so quickly that she nearly fell. ‘What the hell’s up with you?’

  I shrugged my shoulders, and Superman reached in to undo the lock from the inside.

  Cassie was right; the kitchen was a mess. The fruit on the bench had gone bad so that the whole room smelt like the bottom of your schoolbag if you forgot to take your lunch out on the last day before holidays.

  ‘Pong,’ Cassie said from just outside the door.

  I took a couple more steps into the kitchen, and I bumped my knee on the table in the dark, and the noise made Cassie jump.

  ‘I don’t reckon we should be in here,’ she said. ‘What if you touch stuff and get your fingerprints all over it?’

  If you waited for long enough your eyes got better so there was just enough light to see. I saw the bag of Tink’s treats was still on the table.

  ‘What are we even looking for?’ Cassie said.

  ‘Ms Hilcombe,’ I said, and the dry little whisper sounded funny in the dead air. I looked back at Cassie. She had her arms folded across her chest, and she still hadn’t moved from the door.

  ‘I think we should leave,’ she said.

  Superman held his cape tight around his body, and it helped to keep the cold out, but he still had to step from side to side to stay warm.

  ‘I promised,’ I said. I went over to the fridge and reached up to run my fingers along the top. I felt for the photo but there was nothing, and when I brought my fingers back down they were chalky with dust. I wanted to sneeze but I held it in. The photo of Tink was still on the fridge, and she stared back at me.

  ‘Please stop touching stuff,’ Cassie said.

  I got up on my tippy-toes and walked into the lounge room, and the curtains weren’t closed enough to stop the light from the street coming in. Ms Hilcombe’s chair was empty, and her books were all over the ground, and if you put your hand on the carpet where Tink liked to sleep you could hardly remember it warm. I closed my eyes and squeezed them until the goosebumps came up in the dark. Ms Hilcombe piled her hair all on top of her head, and her long skirts dragged behind her, and you could tell she was coming down the school corridor because of the sound her bracelets made banging together along her arm.

  ‘Can we just go?’ Cassie said from the kitchen.

  There was a little hallway from the front door to the bathroom, and Ms Hilcombe’s bedroom was off to the right of that. If you pushed the door open you had to make sure that you used your elbow, and definitely not your fingertips. Cassie tiptoed behind me down the dark hallway, and when I looked back over my shoulder she shuddered and put her back against the wall to the bathroom, with her breath all quick in her throat.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ she said. ‘Jesus, Numpty, I’ve already been expelled, I can’t go to prison, too.’

  ‘You can go if you want to,’ I said in a whisper, but even as I said it I hoped that she would stay.

  ‘I’m not leaving you—we’re mates,’ Cassie said, and I felt a little golden light turn on in my tummy.

  I went around the corner, and I heard her come up behind me real quick. ‘Stay where I can see you, though,’ she said. Her breath was warm on the back of my neck. I smiled into the darkness.

  Ms Hilcombe’s bedroom wasn’t very big. It was about the same size as mine and Davey’s, but instead of having two beds she just had a big one, and there weren’t any sheets on. It smelt like what Grandma pours on your knee after you’ve scraped it.

  ‘Pong, again,’ Cassie said.

  I walked over to the dresser, and all the little bottles were lined up in a neat row, and if you put your nose right up against one it smelt like classroom carpet and chalk.

  ‘Did you see these?’ Cassie said, and bent down to pick up a piece of paper.

  ‘Don’t!’ I said, with my voice and not with a whisper, so that the words shot out into the wall.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Cassie said, with her fingertips still on the paper, and her hands shaking in the cold.

  ‘Oh shit, oh shit,’ she said. ‘Wipe the prints off.’

  Superman reached out and took the paper, and he used his cape to rub it down.

  ‘What is it, though?’ Cassie said.

  I took it from Superman with my sleeves pulled up over my hands and tilted it up to the light.

  ‘It’s a letter,’ I said.

  ‘Could be a clue.’

  ‘It’s only got this address on it,’ I said.

  Cassie took it with her hands wrapped up in the hem of her jumper. ‘No good?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. I thought about the note in the letterbox and felt the squeeze in my jaw when I tried to swallow.

  ‘What are we actually looking for?’ Cassie said.

  ‘A farm,’ I said. ‘A couple of hours from here. He lived there too.’

  ‘An address?’ said Cassie. I nodded my head in the darkness. We both stared down at the letter. In the dark the address kept shifting, and you had to hold it up to the window to make the words line up in a row.

  A car drove around the corner, and the light shone in through the curtains, and Cassie shoved me to the dark side of the door. We waited for a minute to make sure the car was gone, and when Cassie breathed out I realised I hadn’t been breathing either. The bees put their stingers in my bones and I felt the pain all deep into my insides. My eyes started to water and it made the room blur.

  ‘Reckon she has an address book?’ Cassie said.

  The longer we stayed in the dark the easier it was to see, but the more the cold got in under our jumpers. There wasn’t anything else in the bedroom. I felt a roll and squeeze in my belly, and I tried not to get sick on the carpet in case the policemen saw.

  ‘Numpty, can we go now?’ Cassie said. ‘Please.’ She put her hand on my shoulder and it was warm in the dark. Superman sat down on the bed, on his cape, and put his head in his hands. Looking at him you’d think he might cry, and he wanted to.

  We walked back out through the living room, and I kept my hands balled up in my jumper so that they couldn’t touch anything else.

  ‘I promised,’ I said to the armchair.

  ‘Wow,’ Cassie said. She’d stopped walking and was pointing to a photo sitting just on top of a pile of papers. ‘Is that what she looked like when she was young?’

  There were two people in the photo; one was a man and one was a woman with frizzy hair. They were standing in front of a farm and smiling.

  ‘That’s Matthew,’ I said. I picked up the picture. It was the one from the top of the fridge.

  ‘She looks happy, hey?’ Cassie said.

  In the darkness you could just make out the white of Ms Hilcombe’s skin.

  I slipped the photo under my jumper.

  ‘You can’t bloody steal that!’ Cassie said
, grabbing for it. ‘The cops are all over the joint.’

  I wrapped my arms around my tummy so she couldn’t get it.

  ‘I’m serious, Numpty,’ Cassie said. ‘Put it back.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I need it.’

  Cassie stared at me for a long time, and the air smelt stale and heavy, and the darkness crept up into the corners of our eyes and blacked out all the colours. Finally Cassie sighed. ‘Whatever, Numpty,’ she said, ‘so long as it means we can go.’

  ***

  We didn’t bother being careful as we walked back along the street. Cassie was chewing on her nails, and when I looked at her she looked away. I thought about wool right down to the skin.

  ‘You’ve gone weird,’ Cassie said.

  I pulled the photo out from under my jumper and looked at it under a streetlight. You could see more with the light on it, like how behind the paddocks there was a house, and at the very back there was a line of trees.

  ‘You shouldn’t have taken that,’ Cassie said.

  ‘They won’t know I have it,’ I said. ‘They don’t know anything.’

  ‘You’re creeping me out, Numpty,’ she said.

  You could tell something was up before you even got to our letterbox by the way all the lights were on. Davey sat on the bottom step of the porch in his pyjamas, with no socks on in the cold.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Davey said, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Cassie glance at me. I heard Grandma’s voice coming out through the open front door.

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’ Cassie asked as Dad started yelling too.

  I looked at the window of Mum’s bedroom. All the lights were on.

  ‘Grandma started yelling about Mum,’ Davey said. His eyes were red and shiny, and he was shaking like he was too cold. Superman came over and wrapped his cape around us, and our breath made little white clouds in the air.

  ‘Go,’ I said to Cassie, but she only took a few steps backwards before she stopped. ‘Are you sure?’

  Davey was sniffing and wiping his nose on his sleeve.